Google has unveiled a new extension to its popular Google News product. From the Google Labs team, Fast Flip gives readers the ability to browse pages of actual news or magazine articles, rather than just the headlines and a brief summary, as with its established Google News system.

Initially working with a few select publisher partners, (36 to be precise), including Newsweek, Salon.com and The New York Times, Google no doubt hopes to grow the service to incorporate a much wider selection of publications.

Fast Flip works by displaying images of the actual article pages. Since Google caches them, access is super-speedy. Clicking on a ‘thumbnail’ image of an article – which are big enough to see the headlines but not to read the text – takes the user to a full-size replication of the item. However, this is still an image and hence hyperlinks within the articles are not clickable. Clicking on the full-screen image of the article spawns a new browser tab and redirects the reader to the article proper, hosted by the source publication rather than Google.

It seems pretty neat. Google has come under fire for its Google News service, with many news providers feeling irked that readers might pick up their news from Google rather than going straight to the source. Google seems to be listening to these criticisms and Fast Flip provides a way for publishers to share in the ad revenue generated by readers who get their news through Google.